Census confirms Hurricane Katrina was a home wrecker: An editorial

According to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Huricane Katrina will be remembered as something other than just a hurricane. She will also be remembered as a home wrecker. Two-thirds of households in New Orleans had at least one family member move away, a number researchers found to be unusually high.

Kathy Anderson, The Times-Picayune archiveHurricane Katrina flooding near the University of New Orleans was photographed Sept. 9, 2005.

Of course, Katrina wasn't the usual response and the destruction the New Orleans area was forced to deal with wasn't typical. The levee failures that accompanied the storm left much of the area underwater for weeks, and the strain that placed on families forced to find lodging either here or abroad is incalculable.

Add to that the stress of trying to rebuild: including the stinginess of insurance companies and the maddening bureaucracy that was the Road Home program.

The Population Research Center at RAND, which is behind the study, points out that New Orleans had a much higher percentage of multi-generational households before the storm, which may have made them harder to keep intact.

"We would expect that some families might have to separate briefly following a disaster such as a major hurricane," said Michael Rendall, author of the study. "But in New Orleans, where extended-family households were very common, the hurricane had a large and longer-term impact on the breakup of households."

The latest census findings seem to confirm the report. Between 2000 and 2010, the proportion of households composed of families dropped. So did the proportion of households that included a husband and wife.

Katrina can't be blamed for all of that, but she certainly played a role.